


A Lie upon your Lips

by UMsArchive



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, Implied Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 05:38:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10237055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UMsArchive/pseuds/UMsArchive
Summary: Victor wakes up the morning after the banquet with the symptoms of hanahaki disease. He refuses to get treated. Yakov thinks he is selfish. Yurio thinks he's an idiot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hanahaki disease - an illness born from one-sided love, where the patient throws up and coughs of flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. The infection can be removed through surgery, but the feelings disappear along with the petals  
> -  
> Lavender Roses: A Lavender rose like its color conveys enchantment. It also expresses "love at first sight". Darker shades of lavender roses (close to purple) convey a sense of regal majesty and splendor. These roses are used to express fascination and adoration.
> 
> Snowdrops (white): The first flowers, announcing upcoming spring season while there's still snow on the ground, delicate looking white snowdrops, symbolize hope and new beginning. By producing their own heat, snowdrops actually melt the snow in their surroundings.

Victor is woken up by a choking feeling. He coughs and splatters and spits, feeling like he might never taste air again. He hasn't been so scared and defenseless ever in his life. 

But then he throws up whatever there is to, the foreign material blocking his throat, and he takes deep breaths, still shaking with that death fear. His hand stretches for the lamp, shaking. It dawns on him, there has been no flashes of his past life or conciliation with his fate. No dying happy. And that's what scares him most. If he hasn't woken up in time, that was all he was ever gonna get.

Victor Nikiforov, found dead in his hotel room. Nothing remarkable, scene examiners commented.

He looks down, not sure what to expect, yet not giving much thought to the possible cause of his death at this point either. Lavander coloured thin petals on his duvet make his breath hitch. He must be hallucinating - mistaken. No-

He falls back onto his pillow, eyes closed slowly, twitching painfully. A loveless creature to be dying of love sounds too cliché to be his own fate. 

He hiccups in the changing room at Worlds. A single petal flies up in the air, smeared red with his blood. Victor laughs and there's no humour but mad horror in it.

He wipes his lips carefully in the mirror, applies a little make up on his death paled cheeks and he's off to impress the world. As the gold hangs from his neck, he wonders if they'd bury him with his medals. No one makes it past a year after contracting the disease, he's fully aware by now. But his mind is betraying its survival instincts. 'Losing this feeling will be worse than losing your life,' it says.

He finally tells Yakov. His hand is already on the phone by the time Victor means to refuse any attempt at help. When he asks Victor if he happens to have a better plan, of course he is sarcastic. He hopes Victor is, too, when he says his bags are ready, that his plane leaves in a couple hours. He gets his answer by the time he sees him off later. 

When Victor kisses his cheek, his words sounding very much like a last goodbye, it's hard to believe anything but what it seems like. He has to answer reporter's questions later on. He has nothing to comment in but Victor's selfishness. Either in being a coach or by becoming a coach.

Victor cries holding on to Makkachin his first night in Hasetsu. He feels the thorns scratching the walls of his lungs and he lunges on his feet, managing to reach the bathroom in time. There are surfaces he can clean up easily, here, ways to dispose of the cursed petals, too. These days, they're so drenched in blood he wonders if he imagined their initial colour or if it had changed.

***

Yurio comes uninvited in his room once, during his stay. He stops mid-complaint - Victor is changing into a new shirt, the discarded one lying on the floor, some splatter of blood and a few drowned messy petals on its front. He looks like he's about to burst, but stops, reluctant.

He ends up talking more patiently than it'd be expected of him, "If I am better than him, you'll have that surgery when we go back."

"How else?" Victor smiles grimly.

Yurio isn't better than him, though. Everything considered, he knows Victor 's conclusion isn't only right, but it's also making the legend's captivation with the Japanese man grow. It's a dangerous domino game for him and he's an idiot. 

He remembers his own words, how having no inspiration makes you as good as dead. He hasn't considered them so literally before, though. Victor Nikiforov - bowed so deeply in the face of inspiration and fascination as to lay his life on the line for it.

He wonders if there's a deeper message Victor means to deliver in the choice of routines, but maybe he's looking too much into it.

He thinks things might have taken a good turn by the Grand Prix Final, but he finds Victor bursting into a coughing fit the morning of the competition, clear lavender coloured petals soaring beyond the bridge's railing. 

He kicks him hard, angrily. "Victor Nikiforov is dead."

The day of the free skate, Victor intercepts him and Yakov as they head towards the rink for Yurio's performance. He doesn't look healthier, but he looks determined as he declares his comeback. 

Both he and Yakov have the same question hanging in the air, unspoken - which was the other half of the decision?

***

As he's waiting for the podium ceremony, Yurio feels an annoying ticklish irritation down his throat. Further away, Mila has managed to enter in a conversation with Otabek. She's reclining in her seat, whispering something to him.

He gulps, clears his throat vehemently, forces himself to cough, just anything to get rid of the annoying sensation. At the third attempt, a single white petal gets spit into his bailed fist.


End file.
